|
Recent Reports
October 22, 2001; overview
for SETFEAG meeting
This 2-year FRDC-funded project has been set
up as a partnership between CSIRO and industry (SETFIA and SENTA);
fishers’ knowledge on the distribution, characteristics and
ecology of shelf and upper slope fishing grounds (~100 –1000 m)
is being systematically collected, verified and integrated with
survey data by CSIRO. Prospective outcomes include fishery-wide
habitat maps at various scales of resolution and a clearer understanding
of the patterns of use (ecological and anthropogenic) and their
impacts. The project provides industry with both the opportunity
to be fully involved in an ecological study (including the year-2
field program), as well as a tool to respond to upcoming environmental
legislation. In this way we hope to encourage industry to take a
proactive stance on ES management.
It is a sensitive project: operators are being
asked to provide their IP in the form of personal fishing information
accumulated over long periods at the same time as being uncertain
about how the information will eventually be used. Uncertainty stems
from concern that commercially sensitive information will be made
public, cross-sectoral tensions, and fears that information provided
by fishers’ will be used against industry. Despite these potential
barriers to cooperation, industry is ‘on-board’: we have
strong (but not unanimous) support from the Association executives
and strong support from many individual operators - but opposition
from others. This level of support has enabled the project to rapidly
gain momentum and has allowed us to gather information for a large
part of the fishery. Maps are being made and returned to contributors,
and, with their permission, some example maps are being circulated
to a wider section of industry to demonstrate the types of outputs
we anticipate.
Industry’s uncertainties are being addressed
in a number of ways. Most importantly, we maintain a high level
of communication with the Associations, and with individuals through
face-to-face contact in ports and regular phone contact. This enables
discussion of the prospective benefits from sharing and combing
information. The contributions of both parties and the ways in which
project outputs will be released have been made explicit in an MOU.
We register all incoming and outgoing data and maps, and there is
strict security for electronic and paper copies of industry data.
Project development and management is overseen by a Steering Committee
made up by industry representatives together with experts from key
agencies.
An important mechanism for communicating our
progress and results back to industry, to groups such as yours,
and to a wider audience will be through a project website. We aim
to have this up by December 1.
....
14 June 2001; update for
SETFIA and SENTA meetings
Most of our activity in the first few months
has been setting the project up, planning for the collection of
information, and talking to industry about the project’s aims.
The key things we’d like to inform the associations about are:
1. Establishment of a Steering Committee
We are pleased with the outcome on this: we
have a good group of people with a broad range of relevant experience.
We have met with them all individually. They are supportive of the
project’s aims and industry’s role in the process. We
believe we can rely on them to facilitate discussion of key issues
- particularly to promote industry involvement in spatial management
and ESD planning, communication of information and confidentiality
issues. They are:
- Alan Campbell, a trawl operator representing
the South East Trawl Fishing Industry Association (SETFIA)
- Greg Keatley, a drop-liner representing
the South East Non-Trawl Fishing Industry Association (SENTA)
- Dr Tony Smith, a senior scientist from
CSIRO representing SEFAG
- Katrina Maguire, the Environment Manager
for AFMA
- Katherine Short, the World Wide Fund for
Nature’s Fisheries Project Officer for the SEF
- Dave Johnson, the Planning and Assessment
Manager for the National Oceans Office
2. Involvement of Chris Ashby from MAFRI
Chris will replace Jeremy Prince to help liaison
with the trawl industry. This was something suggested by SETFIA
and is an excellent outcome for the project. His presence around
the ports with the ISMP will give us more opportunities to interact
with industry – hopefully providing a better two-flow of information
as the project develops. He’ll be coming down to Hobart in
the near future to get up-to-speed on the project and help fine-tune
the questionnaire that we’ll use to match fishers’ knowledge
to the mapping information.
3. Revised timetable
We’ve decided to delay the timetable
by a couple of months for a variety of reasons. We plan to hold
the first Steering Committee meeting in August, then crank-up port
activity in September. Actually, this is a big advantage because
we can be better prepared with our map-making software, the questionnaire
and the database for holding all the information.
4. Communication and planning
So far, Alan has made a number of visits to
operators in the fishery to chat about the project, and to prepare
for data collection later in the year. As a result, he is better
informed about current industry thinking – particularly the
range of opinion which still varies from strong support to equally
strong concerns about it ‘coming back to bite’ industry.
This will be carefully factored in to the ways in which information
will be collected and released.
Alan has collected plotter data from several
trawl operators for the east coast (NSW, VIC and TAS) and we are
using this to get our map production methods sorted out using real
data. Alan also got direct input from operators into the form of
the questionnaire and the questions asked. An important part of
planning this is to make sure it includes information that industry
wants to go with the maps.
5. Near future
Alan will visit some non-trawl (starting with
Greg Keatley on June 24th) and other trawl operators
in the western part of the SEF – particularly Alan Campbell
– to show them how the map-making will work, and to road-test
the questionnaire.
We will be able to provide a more detailed
update at the next Association meetings.
Cc: Steering Committee members; Pascale Baelde,
Crispian Ashby
....
June 26 2001; 6-month
milestone report for the FRDC
We are pleased to report that we have made
a strong start on this project in the first 6 months. Our timelines
have been revised back a little due to staff changes and a conscious
decision to invest more time in organizing people and structures,
including interacting with industry, ahead of the main phase of
port visits. We can report the following specific outcomes:
Appointment of industry liaison staff:
Formal contracts are in place for staged deliverables to match the
timelines and key steps of the project (eg, interviews with fishers,
Steering Committee meetings and workshops). The first has been a
review by Pascale Baelde of previous FRDC industry knowledge studies
for information relevant to this project. A great result for the
project was the appointment of Crispian Ashby from MAFRI to replace
Jeremy Prince (who resigned for reasons unrelated to this project).
Crispian has strong and current links with the SEF trawl sector
and was recommended by SETFIA; we have a formal project planning
meeting with him scheduled for July 13th.
Formation of Steering Committee: We
have appointed 6 highly experienced members representing the South
East Trawl and Non-Trawl Fishing Industry Associations, SEFAG, AFMA,
WWF and the NOO. Terms of Reference are established and our first
meeting, at which we will present and review the project’s
methods, timetable and reporting, is scheduled for August 3rd.
Communication with industry: The projects
aims, methods and outputs have been presented and discussed in detail
at a series of formal and informal meetings with industry Associations
and individual operators. These include the SETFIA and SENTA meetings
in March, the SEFAG port tour in April, and visits to key operators
in Sydney, Bermagui, Eden and Beachport. A summary progress report
was sent to SETFIA, SENTA and SEFAG for their respective meetings
in June. Support for the project remains strong at the Association
level and at the level of many (but not all) individual operators.
Collection of mapping data: We have
allowed more time in the early phase of the project to collect and
process data before finalising our map-making protocols and the
questionnaire for gathering map-attribute data. It is already clear
from the insights we’ve gained by doing this that we will get
a better result in the long run. Several individual fishers have
provided high quality map data for the shelf and slope regions between
Ulladulla and NE Tasmania, and for a range of slope areas between
western Tasmania and Beachport. This information has been set up
in a GIS and used to produce interim maps are progressively being
returned to the fishers for checking. These fishers have also contributed
to the design of the draft questionnaire that is to be finalised
at the project meeting on July 13th.
Design and fabrication of camera system:
after three planning meetings we have a design for a versatile and
robust camera system. (This is to be used from industry vessels
next year to photograph seabed habitats in key fishing grounds for
validation and to enhance ecological knowledge.) Engineering drawings
for the deck winch (FRDC funded) are in progress; tenders for its
fabrication will be called next month. Other components (CSIRO funded)
are being acquired; most significantly, the 800 m fibre optic
Kevlar cable has arrived from the US.
Communication with the NOO: We have
maintained regular contact with David Johnson, their Planning and
Assessment Manager and the NOO representative on the project Steering
Committee.
Intellectual Property Issues Arising: None
Publications or Media Reports:
Abstract accepted for ‘Putting Fishers’
Knowledge to Work’ conference at UBC: Williams and Bax - "Integrating
fishers’ knowledge with survey data to understand the structure,
ecology and use of a seascape off southeastern Australia"
|
